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great-granddad of yours in the Wyfies? That why you transferred up here?'
    Pascoe thought, shall I tell him that I have no interest whatsoever in my great-grandfather and that my sole reason for applying for, transfer was to get away from a fascist superior whose methods and morality I equally deplored (but whom I am now starting to recall with nostalgic fondness) and whose halitosic daughter fancied me rotten?
    He said, 'A man likes to be near his roots, sir.'
    Their gazes locked, the younger man's warm with sincerity, the older man's steadfast with understanding.
    Then Dalziel said, 'Bollocks. It'll either be trouble with a tart or your boss. Now give us a hand picking up this lot. What the hell were you playing at? All that idiosyncratic crap, encouraging him to fire it on the floor again?'
    'I thought, sir,' said Pascoe stooping to pick up the scattered kit, 'that as he was certainly going to do it anyway, I might as well use the certainty to authenticate my own role.'
    'By God, lad, if tha thinks as long-winded as tha speaks, I'm surprised you ever got out of nappies. Glad you picked me up on the food, but. I bet the bugger has me doubling to the cookhouse to collect it.'
    'Is that why you suggested it, sir? To get a look around, perhaps suss out a way to escape?' asked Pascoe, impressed.
    'Don't be bloody daft,' said Dalziel. 'I suggested it 'cos I'm bloody starving!'
    I believe he means it! thought Pascoe helplessly. He's just like all of his type and generation. Not without a certain animal cunning and sharpness, but like an animal, incapable of dealing with more than the immediate moment, the short-term crisis. Either something will turn up or it will go away, that's his philosophy. If we're going to get out of this, it's going to need me to take the initiative.
    He said, 'I was thinking, sir. The woman, Judith, how far do you think she'll go with her brother's schemes? I wondered if I should try to work on her . . .'
    'Show her your dick, you mean, and tell her you love her? She'd shoot it off without a second thought. Very moral lass, Jude. Very faithful. A one man woman and she'll go all the way to protect them as she's given her loyalty to. Man who gets a lass like Jude can count himself lucky.'
    Pascoe had finished collecting the kit, and now he watched as Dalziel once more neatly folded it and arranged it on the bed.
    He said, 'Do you really think playing this crazy game is going to get us anywhere?'
    'Game? Aye, that's what it is, I suppose. That's what the army is, in peacetime any road, and especially in the glasshouse. None of this daft rehabilitation stuff there. They don't want to make good citizens out of you. They want to make good soldiers, and a good soldier is one who does what he's told, no questions asked.'
    'So why's Trotter doing this to you?'
    'Because it's the worst thing he can think of. Also because he went through it for years and the poor sod reckons he
    came out on top. And he thinks a few days of what he suffered for years will break me like a pencil point. Which reminds me.'
    He stepped onto the bed which groaned under his weight, removed his belt and with the buckle scratched on the damp granite wall the name trotter.
    'There,' he said stepping down. 'My name kept Tankie going. Let's see if his can do the same for me.'
    'He must have been really fixated on his mother to hate you so much,' said Pascoe.
    'Oh aye. There were another reason, but his mum would've been enough. Worshipped her like she was the Virgin Mary. Mebbe that's why he's so bent on getting himself crucified. You'll have noticed the tattoo on Tankie's arm? Got that done when he were a lad. But the black border round it he did himself after she snuffed it. Used boot blacking and a sharpened bed spring while he were in the glasshouse. They thought they might have to cut off the arm, but he survived. Then while he were convalescing, he hit his guard with his drip, stole his clothes, jumped out of a third-storey window and